viernes, 30 de junio de 2017

It wasn’t very normal for Truman to be
assigned to a special mission. Not that he didn’t deserved to be in one, rather
than his superiors had always deemed preferable that he stayed with the troops,
helping do what soldiers usually do instead of traveling the globe protecting
something or someone. He had never been the bodyguard type and people saw that.
Instead, they considered him a mastermind of strategy, a very skilled mind that
could solve difficult situations were a lot was at risk.

However, about a week or so ago, he had been
summoned by his superiors and instantly praised and thanked for his service.
When they did that, he knew that they wanted something out of him. The only
question was what? What did they want him to do that they couldn’t find anyone
else to do it? Was he their first choice or had they just decided to send
someone that not many people would miss? So many questions amassed in his head
in only a few seconds. His muscles were tense.

After being done with the praising, they explained
they needed him to form a team to protect a very special cargo travelling
through a very difficult region of the world. A region at war that needed to be
crossed by a train carrying very important things for the country. At first,
Truman wasn’t very convinced by the aspect of the mission. He was normally
given a lot to work with but this time they wanted him to get a team just to
ride and protect a train. They wouldn’t say anything else.

But he couldn’t refuse to help him. In the
military, there was no such thing as the word “no”. You can have doubts and you
can even express them to your superiors but you cannot, never, say “no” to any
of their orders. Maybe one day when you become a superior as well and that may
never happen for many reasons people knew very well but preferred not to talk
about. The point was the he had no option but to accept the mission, as vague
and unclear as his orders could be.

Truman contacted every single soldier that he
knew, the ones that were actually good at what they did. The team he needed to
gather had to be very large in order to have a successful trip through deserts
and farmlands, as well as devastated cities. Some of the men he contacted were
spending some time with their families but they all accept in an instant. Again,
there was never a negative word inside of the military; there were just orders
and the right way to proceed about them. Besides, they all respected Truman a
lot, as they knew him from the field.

They were given amazing brand new weapons as
well as a special suit that would protect them in case of an attack. As there
was no time to train, Truman asked the men he had invited to the mission to
exercise daily until the day they traveled to the city where the train was
stationed. They all obliged, going back to their intense gym routine in the
blink of an eye. Most of them loved the pain that exercising brought. They felt
more powerful after it and their confidence was easily boosted.

When
they got to the train, they were kind of surprised to discover that the train
they had to protect was not a cargo train but rather an actual passenger train,
with few but too many passengers for them to worry about. Truman expressed his
concern to one of his bosses but he just said he had done lots of missions like
this one that he didn’t have to worry. But he did, because he had prepared
everything to protect a cargo train, not really a place were people had drinks
and laughed too.

Because the train was not exclusive to one
person. To ensure that their enemies thought twice about attacking the
transport, the government had decide to use passengers as a human shield to
protect whatever it was that the government needed to have protected. It was
very complicated and not very patriotic to use others in order to defend something
that no one knew what it was, but once again, they had to trust the superior
and just proceed with everything, no matter where they were.

The train departed on time, early in the
morning, with at least one hundred people seating inside. The team had no idea
where what they protecting was in the train but, as they guarded doors and
such, they discussed their ideas about what it was and why the government want
to protect it like that. Some said it was only a bunch of papers incriminating
someone somewhere and others were certain it was some kind of new weapon that
they had developed in secret and needed to be moved.

Any of the guesses could be correct, that was
the thing that bothered Truman the most. As he walked outside, in order to
guard the last wagon, he realized for the first time in his life that he had no
idea why he was in that place. Something didn’t feel right to him and when that
happened he did prefer to go with his gut instead than his head. Whenever
something was off, he had stomach cramps. By the time he reached the last
wagon, he wasn’t feeling especially great either. More like the opposite. He
felt a little dizzy and then realized it wasn’t because of his gut.

Before fainting Truman had realized what was
going on: they had used some kind of poison or gas that made people fall
asleep. As his eyes closed, he was certain that he had fallen into some kind of
trap but he had no idea who the trap was supposed to catch. The other soldiers
were not attacked, only him as he was alone and the leader of the bunch. He
woke up much later, judging by the night sky outside. Truman knew that he was
still inside the train but in some sort of closet.

He was very cramped in that small space, his
head still spinning. He wanted to talk to someone; he wanted his questions
answered and his men beside him. But he didn’t get any of his wishes that
night. Instead, he go to hear the most awful of noises: a woman’s scream
pierced the sky. It was so intense, that Truman felt the voice inside him for a
while. The sad thing was that the scream was followed by more screams and they
were not only done by the same woman, but by other people too.

Truman fought the cable they had used to tie
him up. But it didn’t move from his wrists for a second. She tried to make
every part of the small room to shake in order to cause someone to hear him or
at least to be able to open the door but he couldn’t. They must have used some
kind of lock for the door and the cable on his wrists seemed to pierce into his
skin every time he tried to get rid of it. It was very painful, because he had
tried very hard and now his wrists were covered in blood.

The screaming continued and it was followed by
the sound of weapons. Truman’s face was drained of all blood when he heard
something he could recognize anywhere: his brand new weapons. He had practiced
a bit before boarding the train and had discovered how that new assault weapon
was just so much better than existing ones. Apparently they were made only to
be used by a special task force that protected the most private secrets of the
nation, whenever and wherever necessary.

The sound of the weapons lasted for at least
fifteen minutes. Then, it was silence. A very eerie silence because nothing but
the train tracks could be heard. Truman thought that maybe they had been
attacked by the enemy and now they had killed everyone on the train.

But then the door opened and someone pulled
him out of the tiny closet. The brightness of the lights were very hard to look
at but it was way harder to look at one of his superiors with one of the new
weapons on his hand. And on the floor, Truman’s team, all dead. It was the
first time he needed someone to explain the situation.

martes, 15 de noviembre de 2016

Everyone at the airport was ready. The staff
had put on their best clothes and every single corner of the small terminal
building had been cleaned to the last millimeter. From very early in the
morning, people had arrived to help organize every single part of this
impromptu visit. After all, it was the president of the most powerful country
in the world. And theirs was one of the poorest and most isolated ones on the
whole planet. However, the presidential plane had to refuel somewhere, so the
small nation had received the honor of hosting the president for a few hours.

From the moment they had been warned about the
impending arrival of the plane, hundreds of people were put to work. Not only
those in the airport, people who only really worked on weekdays and even then
only in certain time frames, but also every single operator and technician
available. They wanted not only the people to feel welcomed but also to make
the best work possible with the plane. They got fuel from the city’s reserves,
as the amount they had on the airport was not enough to refill a plane the size
of the one they were going to see in a few hours.

The process required almost every person in
the capital, a city of about a thousand people, to wake up and also help by
cleaning the streets of the city and the authorities enabling the movement of
fuel reserves from where they stored it to the airport, which was fairly close
to the city. People took to the streets with brooms and mops and every single
cleaning help they could get, but the truth was no one really knew if the
president was going to land and stay on the plane or walk around a little bit.
Many people were curious like that.

The president of the tiny nation was the one
that was moving all over his house, calling the right people and asking
everything from food to more cleaning products. He wanted to send a message
through TV but the people of the studios were helping around so he decided to
send it through the radio. It was much simpler and more effective; as it was
the medium of communication that people listened to while they were preparing
the city for the big arrival. Every single person in the country heard it and
everyone understood the importance of the visit.

To the eyes of the world, it was practically a
miracle that their country actually existed. To be honest, it had been a thing
of luck and one of those strange coincidences that happen out of nowhere. They
were too isolated and unimportant. Practically everything they had came from
their neighbor to the east. So they had known starvation and real poverty
because when that neighbor didn’t have enough for themselves, they suffered
too. But the world in general never really knew anything because they weren’t
watching, until now.

The country had no army but its people did
behave like one once the president’s message had reached every single person.
They knew they had around six hours to have everything ready. With luck, the
weather up in the clouds would delay the plane a bit more to give them more
time but they constantly checked with the aircraft and that didn’t seem to be
the case. Everyone had to do their best in the time given. Only an hour after
the president’s announcement, everything was coming up nicely and all citizens
were helping, even elders and children.

A huge amount of people arrived at the
terminal in order to use the old kitchens that some rundown businesses had not
used in several years. The idea was to cook a good amount of their national
food for the people arriving, as well as other dishes that they might like. It
wasn’t crazy to think that they would be very hungry, even at that early hour
of the day. After all, this was all going on in the darkness of the night. The
president was scheduled to arrive around eight o’clock in the morning, so they had
to wake up or not even sleep.

The cooking team was led by the nation
president’s chef, his own wife. It wasn’t like in other countries were the
president has everything and the people below him have nothing. In that nation,
everyone was basically the same. People hadn’t starved in some years but they
weren’t rich or even close to that. So the president’s wife decided it was best
if someone close to the government like her supervised the food. It was the
best way to guarantee that it would be perfect for someone with such a high
profile as the ruler of the richest country in the world.

They acknowledge that all those people in that
plane, around two hundred according to the information they had shared with
them, had been and eaten in places much better than their small country. That
was obvious and they didn’t feel bad about it. But they wanted them to leave
knowing a little bit more of their culture and about what they loved to eat and
drink in those lands. The menu had been defined by the president’s wife and she
was very confident that it was going to be one of the best feasts in the
recorded history of their nation.

It consisted of a special recipe for meatballs
using a kind of cheese that was made from goat milk, which also happened to be
used in their national beverage, which was kind of like a milkshake but less
thick and richer in flavor. They also cooked the goats in various ways and were
very proud about their vegetables and mushrooms, of which they had a very large
variety. Various dishes were cooked with all those ingredients and some spices
too.

The small country’s president arrived in the
airport only two hours before the arrival of the plane, to check everything
out. The terminal had been painted in record time by volunteers and the control
tower was bursting with life when, in normal days, it would only have one
person and not even all day. He thanked everyone there and then went to the
terminal’s commercial area where his wife and helpers were giving the final
touches to the food. The smell had flooded the building and it was very
delicious, so much that many stomachs growled loudly.

Then, he went outside and did a walk around
the tarmac and the runway. There wasn’t a single spec of dust anywhere, which
he thought was absolutely magnificent, especially for such a windy part of the
country. It seemed as if the weather was also helping them achieve their goal.
The red carpet in the tarmac was the same one that the president had stepped on
when he was inaugurated for his term, more than three years ago. A president’s
term was five years and he couldn’t be reelected, which he personally thought
was a good idea.

He decided to check the band that had been
practicing for hour in the cold and congratulated them for the amount of love
they were showing the country. He stayed a bit to hear them play and, to be
fair, they were not as prepared as he would have like, but there was no way of
getting better musicians with only an hour to go. They would have to do. What
made them special, at the end of the day, was that they played their
instruments with real passion and the idea of making their country proud. And
that was more than enough.

The president decided to wait for the plane in
the control tower. There, he would be able to know every detail about the
upcoming visit. When he stepped in, the plane had crossed into their airspace.
It would be only thirty minutes until they touched down in the runway. The
atmosphere was really special. Every single person in the tower, in the
terminal, in the tarmac and even in the city was ecstatic. This was, by far,
the most exciting thing to ever happen in their country. And they had all
worked together to make it the best day possible.

The plane came out of the clouds and landed,
in a very soft and elegant manner. Everyone applauded and greeted the people
inside through the radio. The president ran outside, getting ready with all
others. Many people from the city had come out of curiosity and they had been
allowed to stay a bit further away. The plane parked exactly where they had
determined it should go. For some minutes, nothing happened. Then, the door
opened and everyone stopped breathing for a second. Their moment had come.

jueves, 23 de junio de 2016

The wind blew gently through the trees. Some
pinecones and dried leaves fell softly to the ground and small animals ran to
their holes in the ground or in the trees. The weather was getting worse by the
minute and they could all feel it. All except for Samira. She was a rather
beautiful woman wearing a dress to big to walk around the wood. It had already
been ripped apart in some areas and it looked dirty. Some stains on it were
because of mud and water but others were clearly blood.

Samira didn’t stop when the wind got stronger.
She kept on walking through the forest, as she tried to make her dress fit
between the trees and not get ripped apart more. But that wasn’t possible. She
finally stopped when the forest got too dense and it was much darker in the
ground that in the upper area of the trees. She just stayed there, in the spot
she was, and waited. Sure enough, rain came some minutes after. The trees were
protection enough but she got very wet anyhow.

As the rain poured onto her, Samir began to cry,
finally breaking down. She fell to her knees, which was not something very easy
to do in that dress, and cried her eyes off. It was confusing to see the rain
on her face and also the tears. It was difficult to know what was what but
thanks to all that water she was able to finish crying fast and started
thinking about what to do next. She had come a long way, or so she thought, and
there was no way she would stop midway through the woods.

Realizing her dress couldn’t come with her,
she carefully removed it. It wasn’t easy as it opened in the back and there was
no one to help her with that. But after a couple of tries, the zipper lowered
enough for her to grab it and pull it down. Carefully she removed the top part
and then pulled the dress down her legs. She moved to a side and the dress
stood there, as if a ghost was still wearing it in that part of the woods.

She felt cold and sad to leave her gown behind
but life was much more important. So she kept on going. She had been barefoot
for a while, as the heels she had been wearing had gotten stood in thick mud
not very far from the edge of the forest. Samira decided to keep walking the
way she was walking, sure that it was the right direction in order to get away
from everything.

The trees grew closer in that area, which was
better for her because rain almost didn’t get to the floor. She was cold and
trembling, but at least she could clean some of the water of her body as she
walked over pieces of rotten wood, mud, puddles of water and tons of leaves that
autumn was taking away from the forest. She didn’t stop until it was very dark
and she realized she had to sleep at least a few hours.

She chose a place between two trees where
there was a huge natural bed made of leaves. She didn’t sleep much though,
because her brain kept telling her to keep moving, that she wasn’t safe yet and
that she just couldn’t get all relaxed and happy yet. Samira had to go on
through the forest and then arrived to the fields and, after that, the ocean.
At least that’s how she remembered it was. If she had mistaken her route, it
would be a major problem.

After only three hours of sleep, she kept on
moving through the trees, in the dark. Sometimes, she had to clean her tears
with her dirty hands because se remembered something she had left behind, like
her mother and all the beautiful memories of being who she was. Samira had left
much more than anyone else had ever left before and the decision had already
been taken. And she was sure she had made the right choice. There was no other
way around it.

Finally, she reached the other edged of the
forest and, as she had expected, there were fields after fields of different
kinds. It was the rural area that preceded the ocean, were most of the food was
grown in order for the whole country to have food in their plate. Or at least
that had been the idea behind it. Her mother had been the one who had convinced
her father to do something like that.

He always needed someone to convince him,
someone to tell him what he should do next. People around him were too kind to
tell him that he wasn’t good at his job, at all. But he had advisors and he had
Samira’s mother and that could be enough to be mildly successful as a ruler.
People liked him but did not love him and it was the same for the family as a
whole. However, that worked just fine for everyone. It was the barely minimum,
as someone had pointed our once.

Samira entered the field and hoped the people
that worked in them wouldn’t be around for some time still. Because if they saw
her, they would ask her why she was practically naked in their property. But
after some walking, she realized it was far too early for anyone to be around
there. Besides, it was an orange plantation and the fruits were just beginning
to grow, so no big masses of people would look after those.

She walked fast through the small trees until
she reached a house. The lights were off. But, most interestingly, the family
that lived inside had let a large assortment of clothing to dry out in the sun.
Maybe they had forgotten to put it inside or maybe it had been because of the
rain. Anyway, some of the things were not really wet so Samir stole a white
blouse and some pants.

The only problem was her hair. It wasn’t that
long but it was kind of obvious who she was. She found the solution only a
couple steps away, in the shape of some gardening scissors someone had left
inside a bucket. She grabbed the scissors, got her head a bit wet with water
that had fallen into the bucket and started cutting. It took her a long time to
get it even or what felt like even. They had no mirrors on the outside. The sun
was rising and when she heard a metallic sound from inside the house, she knew
she had to go.

Samira penetrated the fields again and soon
reached another plantation, a cornfield that looked ready to be picked. She had
to find a road or something before she got mistaken with a worker or accused of
being a thief. So she ran away in a different direction and ended up in a dirt
road that seemed to link every single field in the area. There, she could walk
down to the sea easier.

The day began and people were pouring from
every single place. Soon, there were carts passing through the dirt road and
people working hard on the fields. There were even children playing with mud
outside the houses. She thought it was something nice to see, that kind of
routine and simple life of the people that worked the land. She even thought
about staying but it was only for a second.

She had to make it to a boat and get fast away
from there. She had no choice. Samira had done something she really shouldn’t
have and it wasn’t something that got forgiven. Maybe her parents could, but
not her promised husband, He had been humiliated in public and soon everyone
would know how she ran away form her in the wedding dress, fleeing an arranged
wedding with one of the most powerful men in the country.

What she had done could have serious
implications for everyone, not only for her. After all, her marriage had to be
fulfilled in order to for m an alliance between different powers in the region:
between the wisdom and the strength, or that’s what her father said. But she
couldn’t bear to be forced into something like that, out of nowhere. She had
not known she was going to marry that man the morning of the wedding.

Now, Samira looked like a lost boy, asking for
work in one of the many ships that made it into the harbor, bringing fish and
other goods from other places of the world. Finally, a crab fishing crew
accepted her. Their captain happened to be a female, a woman that noticed right
away that Samira was not the boy she was faking to be. The girl sailed that
afternoon but her adventures were far from over.

miércoles, 16 de marzo de 2016

When Muriel was in the shower, she suddenly
remembered how being in a combat zone felt. The water reminded her of the many
times they had been under heavy fire and how they had narrowly escaped death.
Well, how she had narrowly escaped death because there were others who had gave
their lives for the cause that they were defending, a cause that Muriel had
trouble understanding now that she was home.

She had arrived just a couple of days ago,
being received by her parents and her boyfriend, although she hadn’t seen much
of him. Muriel couldn’t explain it but, she had missed John so much in the
filed and now that she had seen him again, she couldn’t even make herself hug
him or kiss him or say anything sweet to him. She felt as if her heart had
dried out in the desert, consumed by everything she had seen, day after day.
She hadn’t even hugged her parents and they had tried and she knew they had
felt it too, that awkwardness, like a barrier that now existed between them.

Trying to scare all the negative feelings and
memories away, Muriel decided to shampoo her hair and enjoy the nice odors of
her parents’ home. Where she came from, she didn’t really have the chance to
wash her hair very often. Actually, she had showered a few times the last month
and it was always a minute, two at the most beneath the coldest water a country
that’s hot as hell can have. But, even so, she had to confess that made her
feel alive.

The smell of chamomile that the shampoo had
reminded her of a time that seemed very far in her past now. She had been
picking up flowers with her sister near a house her father had rented in some
mountains, not very far from the city where she was now. That time seemed like
a dream. Because it was almost false, unlike the burned bodies and mutilated corpses
she had seen in the last year. Her mind immediately went to the destroyed
cities she had seen; the destroyed cities she had helped become a battling
ground. Because, the more she thought about it, the more she realized her
presence there was also a problem.

For many people, she was the enemy and even
locals, just people that tried to survive, ran away from her when she tried to
come near them. It didn’t help that she was the only woman in an assault team
and that the rest of her teammates could be considered brutes. They were man
built like a mountain, guys that she had managed to control during training.
Some were nice enough, she could even talk to them about what she liked and
didn’t like in life, about her boyfriend, her parents, her dream to someday
become a veterinarian. But other were just beasts that had to be controlled at
all times. And some other times, they were released.

She rinsed all of the shampoo from her head
and then just enjoyed the warm water falling on her black, gliding down her
breasts and belly and legs. Muriel instinctively touched her breasts, as if she
didn’t know that they were still there. She really touched them and got a bit
aroused but her goal was not that but to really feel something, whatever it
was. She had been numb for so long that she started touching more and more and
then put one of her hands over her vagina and… And she stopped.

Like a pinch to the stomach, memories came
running into her brain, once again. One of those beasts, one of those animals
she had been to war with, had tried to rape her on the first week. Luckily,
Muriel was a good cadet, a good soldier in general and was able to turn his
brute force against him. She threatened him with telling everyone and he
laughed at her, touching his penis over his pants. She ran away before he could
say or do anything else. That image stuck in her head, even though she had been
trying hard to eliminate of her mind.

She grabbed the soap and decided to clean
herself properly, every single centimeter of her body. She even sat down in the
shower floor in order to feel she was under a waterfall or something like that.
She had always done that, fro, the time she was a child, and her mother always
told her that was a waste of water and that people in other countries would
have loved to have that water to drink and cook and live. And then she would
argue with her and loose.

Now, Muriel had seen the world and the truth
was that she didn’t really cared if a family or a boy or a girl had no water to
drink because of her. She simply didn’t believe that it made any difference.
For her, she had discovered, the world was full of shit. The world was evil and
awful and people didn’t really ended up in the bright side of things. People
had bad endings, every single day. People died or they were killed, and there
were orphans and fear conquered all of their hearts and that was just how
things were.

What Muriel had done in that country, her
killing and her helping, was not useful. She didn’t make any difference by
doing those things and she was ready to tell any idiot than helping with such
stupid things didn’t help anyone. Being kind one moment and awful the next
didn’t make you even or something. It made you human and humans are made to
make each other miserable, make each other suffer and, slowly but surely, make
competition go away because that’s how the world goes.

Then, she stood up from the floor and closed
the shower. The lack of water noise made her tremble but she inhaled deeply and
stepped out.

She took a yellow towel her mother had left
her and dried herself with it over the small mat on the floor that was shaped
like a hamburger. She liked that mat, ever since she had seen it once, one of
those few times she had been able to chat with her mother over Skype. For some
reason, she had shown her the hamburger mat and told her it smelled nice and
that she wanted the house more fun with it. It was such a silly thing but that
stupid mat was a symbol of the home Muriel wanted to go back to. Her goal was
to go back home and see that mat in person and now that wish had become true.

Walking slowly, she got out of the bathroom
and walked to the closet in the next room. She had somehow done that
automatically, because of a force of habit that came from years of doing so,
but her true attire of the day was on the bed. Her father had gone to a special
store were they specialized in pressing and cleaning uniforms. And hers now
looked brand new, with every single detail in the right place. She removed the
plastic and just left it there, on the bed.

That green, that shade of color on the
uniform, had always symbolized so much to her. And now, she was trying to
remember what it was that she had felt the first time she had seen it. And she
did remembered but, again, she couldn’t feel it. She knew that the uniform had
made her and her family happy and proud. She was one of the few people she knew
that had decided to join the army. The reasons were many; include the benefits
in education and even health but also because Muriel had been a patriot for a
long time.

When she was just a little girl, she was the
one that made her father built a small metal thing to put over the front door
of the house in order to put the flag there every time there was a holiday.
With time, she just left the flag there because she liked to see it move with
the wind. She liked the colors and the shape and how it made her feel. Muriel
liked to learn more and more about her country and her community and was really
admired by many parents and teachers, not so much by her fellow students.

But now, all of that had left her. Her
patriotism had been left for dead in a horrible battlefield filled with charred
cars and corpses, were the only noise was the crying of a baby somewhere. Her
flag was a rag with which she had cleaned all of the blood from her hands, as
well as the blood dripping from her weapons.

Muriel put on the uniform and didn’t even look
at herself at the mirror after putting it on. She just went downstairs where
her parents waited for her in the car, to take her to the ceremony where she
would be qualified, by all her brothers ands sisters in arms, as a “hero”.